Clumsy, a book review

This is a review of Clumsy, a graphic novel by Jeffrey Brown.

Clumsy is an autobiographical story of love which begins with Jeffrey and Theresa falling for each other while on a summer road-trip with mutual friends.

Written and illustrated by Jeffrey Brown, the story of their year together as long-distance lovers is told through a series of snapshots of their times on the phone as well as their monthly trips to visit each other.

The writing is similar to that of Liz Prince’s Will You Still Love Me If I Wet The Bed? in that it is very slice-of-life. The stark honesty in the tale shows not only the moments of love and happiness, but also the arguments and times of depression that occur in their relationship. By including both the good times and the bad, Brown proves the adage true, at least from the point of view of a reader, that the bitter times make the sweet times sweeter. He might disagree with that though, as he’s the one who actually experienced those times.

As Brown is shockingly honest in his tale, it makes the book hard to read at times, as the depression felt by Jeffrey carries through from the page and can have a strong impact on the reader. He isn’t afraid to point to his own quirks and deficiencies and how they contributed to the dark moment of lost love. That honesty in his storytelling keeps the story real for the reader, making Clumsy a hard book to put down.

Clumsy is the kind of book I don’t think I’ll sit down regularly and re-read in its entirety, even though I enjoyed it the first time around. The emotion was, at times, too much to thoroughly enjoy, even though I did appreciate it. On the other hand, I do have a feeling I’ll crack it open every once in a while just to flip to a random page and get a dose of joy or sorrow, depending on the vignette.

Warning: The book contains explicit content. Reader discretion is advised.

Bibliographic and other information:

Brown, Jeffrey. Clumsy. Marietta: Top Shelf, 2006.

224 pages. Paperback. ISBN 0971-3597-68.

Clumsy at Top Shelf Productions website.

Jeffrey Brown at Wikipedia and Top Shelf.

Sample pages:

Images (c) 2006 by Jeffrey Brown. Used by permission.

a man in exile

I am currently in a state of web hosting exile; my old host has turned into a steaming pile of feces and I am now searching for a suitable host for my various websites.

While in exile, I figured I’d give wordpress.com a go, as it seems my days at diaryland are numbered. It’s at this point that I wish desperately that I was not using the hosted wordpress, and instead using my own installation, as many of the options that I’m switching from diaryland in order to use are not actually accessible in this incarnation of wordpress (such as adding footnotes).

I’ve already found a few things about wordpress.com that annoy me, but I’m under the impression that most of them can be changed when using a personal installation. Time will tell.

So here I am — finally writing in a space that can handle comments per post (RIP guestbooks), categories, tags, and all sorts of other goodies. I’m finally coming into this millennium.

Wish me luck, and while you’re at it, feel free to recommend some books for me to read over the year, ’cause I sure as heck don’t have anything better to do during reading week…